At the foreign policy debate, President Obama denied a New York Times report detailing a private agreement by the United States and Iran to negotiate on Iran’s nuclear program as part of an international group.
“First of all, those are reports in the newspaper, they are not true,” said Obama. “But our goal is to get iran to recognize it needs to give up its nuclear program and abide by the U.N. Resolutions that have been in place. Because they had the opportunity to reenter the community of nations, and we would welcome them. There are people in Iran who have the same aspirations as people all around the world for a better life. And we hope that their leadership takes the right decision. But the deal we will accept, is they end their nuclear program, and it’s very straightforward.
“I’m glad that Gov. Romney agrees with the steps that we’re taking. There have been times Governor, frankly, during the course of this campaign, where it sounded like you would do the same things we did — and you would say them louder and somehow it would make a difference. And it turns out the work involved in setting up these crippling sanctions is painstaking. It’s meticulous. This is a testament to how we’ve restored American strength and credibility around the world. We had to make sure that all the countries around the world participated, even countries like Russia and China. We’ve had sanctions in place for a long time. It’s because we got everybody to agree that Iran is seeing so much pressure.”
